Printing technology is undergoing a revolution as the inexpensive computational power developed for the desktop computer market is applied to the printing industry. Paralleling this growth are the skyrocketing expectations of consumers. While just a few short years ago the goal was to find an acceptable replacement for typewritten text, now the demand is for photographic quality reproduction of both scanned images and computer-generated graphics. Meeting this demand required a significant increase in the resolution of the printed images—both spatial resolution and color depth—that demanded the application of massive amounts of processing power and memory.
Additional demands are placed on the processing power of a printer system by the need to convert images from the Red-Green-Blue (RGB) format used by virtually all CRT-based computer displays to the Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black (CMYK) format used by most print engines.
Furthermore, while image quality continues to increase, consumers continue to demand higher and higher print speeds from today's desktop printers. This expectation also leads to greater demands on the throughput of the print engine's processor. Thus' there is a need in the art for systems and methods to increase the efficiency and throughput of print engines.